Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Hoystory: "Same idea, different results"

We at PFB noticed something amiss with the Romney rating on jobs recovery, but eagle-eyed Matthew Hoy of the Hoystory blog takes note of a mind-boggling inconsistency regarding the rating:

Here’s Mitt Romney:

"It’s been a failure in the last several years to get America back on track again. It’s taken longer to get Americans back to work than it took during the Great Depression. This is the slowest job recovery since Hoover. It breaks my heart. I want to get us back to work."

Our take: The two PolitiFact versions are irreconcilable given that they interpret Mitt Romney to say what Adam Hasner said specifically. The PolitiFact rationalization literally makes no sense. Romney's statement appears easily reconcilable with charts similar to the one Hoy posted showing job recovery as the percentage of jobs recovered since the start of the recession.

Somehow PolitiFact overlooked the existence of those ubiquitous charts as they fact checked these statements (make that when they fact checked Romney's statement, where it should have made a big difference). Go figure.

Jeff adds:

Readers may wonder why we highlighted this post from Hoy. As the subjects of the two ratings are both Republicans, it hardly qualifies as an obvious example of PolitiFact's liberal bias. However, the incomprehensible inconsistency between the two ratings provides evidence that PolitiFact arrives at their conclusions by whim and the subjective opinion of their staff rather than by objective standards and verifiable facts. It's exactly this type of inconsistent formula that allows the personal ideology of the writers to determine the outcome of PolitiFact's ratings. That lack of objective standards has overwhelmingly harmed Republicans more often than Democrats.

I'll add that Matthew Hoy has critiqued PolitiFact nearly since its inception and has done a consistently outstanding job of it. We enthusiastically recommend his PolitiFact posts featured at the link on our sidebar.

Bryan adds:

A pox on the "Save As Draft" button, the use of which temporarily removed this post from view.

3 comments:

You need to brush up on your reading comprehension. The two statements are NOT the saying the same thing. Romney said that its taking longer to get Americans back to work now than during the Great Depression and that is the slowest job recovery rate since Hoover. Hasner is simply stating that this is the slowest job recovery rate SINCE the Great Depression, not that its any slower the the rate during the Great Depression, and certainly not since Hoover. That's what puts the on different levels of truthfulness.

"When counting after the recession, the 2001 recession had a slower job recovery."http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/may/30/adam-hasner/hasner-says-post-recession-job-creation-worst-grea/